Empowering our migrant workers
With tomorrow, December 18, being the International Day for Migrants, it is a good time for some annual stock-taking on yet another crucial issue that has gripped the modern world. From illegal immigration to refugees, human trafficking, and pure and simple emigration, liberal multiculturalism in the hitherto social democracies of Europe is giving way to zero immigration policies. Countries like Sri Lanka, on the other hand, are facing a mass exodus of their human resources in a world besieged by wars and economic crises.
The world and its people are on the move, especially after the recent pandemic years, and borders that opened up are closing. It is not just a shift of peoples from the Global South to the Global North, but even those professionals in the latter are looking for countries with less stringent tax regimes to move to.
This has caused huge problems for both, the countries faced with an influx of migrants and countries losing their intelligentsia and workforces. The United States which once famously proclaimed "bring down that wall" to the East Germans is now erecting its own wall to stop the Latin Americans streaming in, on foot. Elsewhere, people are breaching borders by boat. Britain is enacting a policy its colonial predecessors performed; sending the people they don't want to another country, just this time they have to pay in cash for the deal. The one-way air ticket against the deportees is described as 'immoral on deontological and consequentialist grounds' as the UK Government tries to justify the move.
It is not just the Global North that has refugees. While migration problems in Europe continue to hog the international news, 20 percent of Lebanon's population are refugees; 10 percent of Jordan's, and 5 percent of Turkey's. Most of them are Palestinians or from North Africa. The Nordic countries are radically changing their open immigration policies as their welfare states are under pressure from the influx of those who escaped wars in West Asia (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.,) and Europe (Ukraine). Taxes on locals are rising to provide subsidised education and health care – and support refugees who find the state dole more profitable than work. Multiculturalism is a negative word now.
Migrants are not only illegal immigrants and refugees, but legitimate workers, including professionals. Statistically, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) gives the number of migrants in the world as close to 300 million people which is four percent of the global population. The remittances transferred globally by migrants – and Diaspora, is over USD 700 billion. Of this, in 2022-23, overseas Indians alone remitted USD 100 billion back to India.
Sri Lanka's own support for its migrant workers has been ad hoc and far below expectations. Last year, in the midst of a horrific economic crisis, waves of despondent citizens fled the country in search of jobs and better-paying jobs. This was the fourth major exodus since Independence. The first happened after 1956 when the Burgher community went to Australia; in the 1970s, there was another exodus due to foreign exchange and other economic factors, and then in 1983 after the race riots.
Successive Governments have been straining to amend the 1985 Foreign Employment Bureau Act. Migrant workers have been both a boon and a headache to Governments. While they bring in the foreign exchange that pays for the country's food and fuel bills and helps bridge the gap between imports and export earnings, harassment in their workplaces, non-payment of wages abroad and social issues at home counterbalance the benefits.
Migrant remittances rose by 63 percent this year to USD 5.4 billion so far compared to USD 3.3 billion last year. They have come at a cost. A news item on Page 8 refers to the number of reported deaths of Sri Lankans in Japan with eight reported cases of suicide in this year alone. Successive governments have hardly done any orientation programmes for migrant workers. Nothing has been done to ensure their mental well-being, work area safety, job contracts, safeguards against exploitation etc. Job agents in league with state agencies are purely interested in making hay in the migration sunshine.
Sri Lanka's missions abroad have become temporary shelters for hundreds in the Gulf and West Asian countries and are illequipped in staff or finances to be of much help to those who have come to grief in those inhospitable environments. Diplomatic missions are asked to intervene when it is often too late, only after these migrant workers are in distress, in hospital or dead. Preventive measures are all but absent as ministers want merely to flourish the outbound statistics. In many countries, it is the goodwill of fellow migrant workers themselves that is relied upon as they pool their meagre resources to help a colleague who has fallen down.
A new argument has come to the fore that emigration of Sri Lankans in fact should be seen positively, not negatively.
The Presidential Secretariat has set up a long overdue separate Office for Overseas Sri Lankans Affairs (OOSLA) under its roof. This office will have a multitude of functions – mainly to act as the centre-point which can liaise with 28 stakeholder government agencies. They will also help in assisting prospective investors. The President is calling upon overseas Sri Lankans – not just the English-speaking, but also those more comfortable in the local languages, to go beyond helping their extended families or old schools and help the community through investment projects. Yet, their role is not focused on the migrant workers who will remain under the care of the Foreign Employment Ministry. This distinction without a difference is unfortunate, as overseas Sri Lankans and migrant workers equally shore up the foreign exchange kitty.
While advanced economic nations continue to grapple with questions of immigration, Sri Lanka will need to make the most of the question of emigration and not just hope, but proactively provide for, those who left its shores either temporarily or for good, to give back and repay whatever the debt they owe their home country.
Most Asian countries, including India and Pakistan have set up separate ministries for their overseas citizens, and are reaping financial benefits from it while providing a service. Even if this means one more ministry, it is worth serious consideration for Sri Lanka. And so too, the right to vote at local elections for all Sri Lankans overseas, including the migrant workers. It is about time.
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